


A Slightly Different Sketch

by PictoJournalist



Series: AdriNath August (my favorite month of the year) [1]
Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Adrinath August, Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-02
Updated: 2017-08-02
Packaged: 2018-12-10 01:49:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11681487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PictoJournalist/pseuds/PictoJournalist
Summary: For AdriNath August Day 1, Reveal (To Each Other)Nathaniel sees some of Adrien's doodles and encourages him to do more. Then Nathaniel has a better idea. Then an evenbetterone.





	A Slightly Different Sketch

“After this is all done,” Nathaniel said as he tapped the end of his pencil on the clipboard in front of him, “you’re going to have to promise not to break up with me right after I hand you this back because my comments are _useless_.”

Adrien smirked up from his own clipboard. “You could suggest I throw the whole draft out and I’d still be okay with that.” He made a quick mark on the paper in front of his clipboard. “Just so long as Miss Bustier gets proof of a peer review, we’re good. I really do appreciate it, though, after I started feeling sick and all yesterday.”

Nathaniel had to keep himself from rolling his eyes at the excuse and instead opted to smirk inwardly. The thing was, Marinette had jetted out of classroom that day with a rushed excuse as soon as Alya showed her a livestream of an akuma attack on the other side of Paris, and Adrien followed soon after with his own excuse. It meant that they missed peer-reviewing book reports, but Alya volunteered to do it over the weekend with Marinette, so Nathaniel volunteered to peer-review Adrien’s report. He knew the excuse was completely false, and he’d figured out at least three months ago that Adrien was Chat Noir. He hadn’t said a word about it, however, as Adrien didn’t seem to want to budge on disclosing about his double-life. Maybe it would be better to just tell him that he knew sometime soon. Knowing Adrien, the lies were wearing down on him.

Nathaniel shifted. “Well, I might have… I asked to look over your paper because you’re my boyfriend and all, yeah, but I also… might not have finished my… draft on time, and you just saved me ten points?”

Adrien offered a knowing smile. “I had a feeling. You still have another page to go, so I can help if you’d need that later.”

Nathaniel waved it off. “I’ll get that done later, but thanks.”

They went on in content silence, Nathaniel still scavenging through the draft for any errors, but to no avail. Figures, of course he’d have to criticize the work of a former homeschooled genius. Even as he went through the brief conclusion paragraph and turned the page, there was nothing wr—

No, on the back page, there was still nothing wrong. In fact, there was something too good to be true.

Nathaniel stared at the page for a solid ten seconds before speaking up. “I…” he said just loud enough for Adrien to look up and see the tiny smile that had formed on his face, “really like your conclusion page. The back of it.” He turned the clipboard around to reveal what he had seen. Scribbled across that back page were a bunch of doodles. Spirals and swirls, cartoonish animals, and a three-panel cartoon with only some human characters and speech bubbles, but no words.

Adrien only gave a confused look as he squinted his eyes to see what Nathaniel was referring to, then his eyes widened in realization. “Oh, uh, those?” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I just got bored waiting to get picked up from school, you know? I obviously don’t do that a lot.”

There was something about the way that Adrien so modestly excused his doodles that broke Nathaniel’s heart. He lowered the clipboard again. “But it looks really good. I had no idea you even liked drawing.”

“Oh, come on, that’s not _real_ drawing,” Adrien waved it off again. “What you do is real drawing.”

Nathaniel deflated. “Adrien, this _is_ real drawing. It’s all so smooth, your art style is so distinguished—it’s cartoony, but distinguished. It’s something you should be proud of. I’d love to see this kind of art more often. I mean, you had fun drawing it, right?”

Adrien could never get used to anyone’s compliments, much less ones coming from his own boyfriend. He looked down at the ground, blushing and nodding once. It was obvious Nathaniel wasn’t going to let him get away with self-deprecation today.

Nathaniel’s smile softened. “You know, I’d love to see more of your artwork sometime.”

Adrien still wouldn’t look up, but he fiddled with his fingers. “I’d… love to do it more.”

There was a tender moment of silence as Nathaniel thought, then he pulled out his phone. “Then I have an idea. You’re comfortable with drawing people, right?” There had been some on the doodles Adrien had drawn, so it seemed like a fair guess to make.

“Uh, I’m not good at it—” Adrien paused when Nathaniel frowned at the dismissal. “—I mean, yeah.” 

“Then—okay, I know it’s the last thing most people would want to draw, but… we could try drawing each other in our own styles. Then we can show each other at the same time. That way I’m not just putting you on the spot and we can have fun with it. Would that be okay?”

It was a simple concept, one that Adrien didn’t find uncomfortable in the slightest, so he started to nod. He stopped, however, when he looked back down at the clipboard in his own hands. “Wait, but the peer reviews—”

“We have the rest of the night for that,” Nathaniel excused. “I mean, unless you’d rather do that first?”

Adrien grinned. “I cannot believe I’m using this as an excuse to enable your chronic procrastination. I’m in.”

* * *

They ended up on opposite sides of Adrien’s room, essays discarded and replaced with plain paper. Nathaniel’s phone had been set for a fifteen-minute timer, counting down next to Nathaniel who was sitting with his knees pulled up atop Adrien’s bed.

Adrien was immediately immersed in focus as he sat cross-legged in one far corner, grasping the clipboard with one arm. As soon as his pencil touched the paper, a tiny bit of his tongue stuck out of the corner of his mouth. It wasn’t an expression Nathaniel had ever seen on Adrien’s face, and he wondered if the task was difficult for him.

Nathaniel found himself unable to focus on sketching Adrien and instead staring at the boy in question on the other side of the room. Now that he was thinking about it, he had drawn Adrien’s portrait so many times it was almost subconscious. It almost didn’t seem appealing anymore, because he could instead just stare at the actual masterpiece over there and experience the same effect.

But he really had to focus on this if he wanted to be fair. Maybe he could mix it up? He bit his lip and twisted his pencil. Surely there had to be some other way to approach this task. Something that would surprise Adrien.

Maybe experimenting with a cartoonish drawing style? No, Adrien was sure to be doing that. Maybe a different approach.

Adrien as some fictional thing. Jedi Adrien. An Adrien gemsona. …No.

Adrien’s head on the body of… something else. A gorgeous animal of some sort that revealed how ethereal he was without being too cheesy or serious. Maybe a lion because, no, a plain cat won’t do. A cat…

Wait.

In a burst of inspiration, Nathaniel brightened, sat up, and scribbled away.

* * *

Fifteen minutes passed, and the phone alarm blared. Nathaniel had just barely finishing up the last of the sketching, and he had been so deep in thought for the first minute that he’d had to hurry just to get it done. His rigid posture crumpled as he leaned his head back and sighed a big sigh of relief, careful to keep the clipboard close to his body. One of his hands pushed the hair out of his face, some of the strands almost sticking to his cheeks.

When he looked up, he saw Adrien sitting against the wall with the pencil set on the ground, contentedly smiling. Right away, Nathaniel inwardly cursed how Adrien hadn’t worked himself ragged and how much of a mess he had to look compared to Adrien right now. 

“You’re okay?” Adrien asked, a hint of teasing in his voice as he got up and sat on the end of his bed.

Nathaniel smiled. “I just got invested in a good idea, that’s all.”

“Aww, something special just for me?” Adrien continued his teasing by batting his eyes.

“I’m pretty sure I’ve given you at least eighteen sketches of your face, Adrien. I _had_ to do something a little different.”

Adrien hummed and nodded, shifting to sitting cross-legged on the end of the bed. “Okay. On three?”

“On three,” Nathaniel confirmed. He gave one last glance down at his paper and smirked again. “One. Two. Three.”

Both clipboards turned.

Nathaniel didn’t quite get a good chance to look at Adrien’s drawing because his clipboard fell forward on the bed as Adrien let out a huge _shriek_ , grasping at the sheets behind him to keep from falling off the bed with one hand and clasping his mouth with the other hand.

“That bad?” Nathaniel asked. His face was peeking from behind his clipboard, and his voice wavered as chuckled threatened to escape him.

Adrien shook his head frantically. Finally trusting in himself to not scream like that again, he removed his hand from face. “No, no,” he breathed, “y-you know it’s not—I mean, it’s—what is—?”

Apparently, Nathaniel was some sort of sadist because he gave a feigned questioning look and then looked back at the picture he was holding. It was a full-body sketch of Chat Noir twirling his tail and winking. “What’s this? It’s you, silly. You know that, right?” 

“Of course I—I mean, _no_ , that’s not true. Actually, it—yes. No! No. Not that you…?” Adrien, in the middle of his existential crisis, looked back up at Nathaniel, as infuriatingly patient as could be at the moment. He just had that little smile on his face, and yes, he loved that smile, but now was _not the time_. Finally, Adrien gave up, flopping on his side on the bed. “You knew all along,” he sighed, defeated.

“Almost everyone did,” Nathaniel admitted. He put his hand out so he was lying on his side with his head perched up on his hand beside Adrien. “It took me a little while than others, I think.” 

“But the fact that you knew at all,” Adrien groaned into his sheets, the words muffled. “And you know I was… lying the whole time every time I had to cover my back about it. You know I don’t like lying to you, right?” 

Nathaniel nodded. “Your face kind of pinched up every time you had to make something up right in front of me.” 

“Jesus, I’m obvious.” 

“Hi obvious, I’m Nathaniel.”

Adrien turned his face over toward Nathaniel and blankly stared. Nathaniel remained completely still, but there was the slyest smirk on his face that just wouldn't dissolve. Neither moved until Adrien’s expression wavered and he couldn't keep from laughing, a tiny little chuckle that he eventually buried as he smushed his face into his sheets, and he felt Nathaniel ruffle his hair. 

“So,” Nathaniel said after a lengthy pause, “two questions.”

“Hmm?”

“First, do you ever, like… purr? Since you’re—you know, kind of a cat? Sometimes?” 

Adrien turned his head again, still resting the side of his head against the sheets. “I'm only telling you because I know you'd appreciate it, but sometimes. I’d do it if you ever asked, though.” He winked. “You want to?” 

“I mean, I’m kind of curious now,” Nathaniel admitted, so he gently ran his hand through Adrien’s hair. It took some time as Adrien shut his eyes and relaxed, but soon enough, there was the unmistakable sound of gentle, content purring. Nathaniel had to hold himself back from making any noise, laughing or marveling at how adorable the sight was. 

They sat like that for a few moments until Adrien finally shifted again, opening his eyes and propping his head up on his elbows. “You said you had another question?”

Nathaniel glanced down at Adrien’s discarded clipboard, still face-down, and then looked back at Adrien. “Can I… look at your sketch?” 

Adrien appeared a bit confused at first, having completely forgot what he had been freaking out about in the first place. When he saw his clipboard again, however, it all suddenly made sense again, and he nodded. “Oh yeah, sure, that’s fine.” 

Nathaniel picked up the clipboard and turned it over. Almost instantaneously, his eyes softened and a blush formed on his cheeks. The picture was a very cartoony Nathaniel with comically large button eyes, a heart-shaped smile, and a little tomato at the top of his head which was even larger than his body. It was certainly a simple sketch, yes, but it was _adorable_.

“I cannot believe,” Nathaniel started, “that my boyfriend, also known as Chat Noir, has the absolute cutest art style in the universe.” 

“ _Nath_ ,” Adrien whined, once again flopping his face into his bedsheets. 

“I’m putting this in a solid gold frame and hanging it up above the fireplace in our future home.” 

Adrien merely groaned in defeat.


End file.
